To those with an interest in academic research on the topics discussed by members of this group, there has just been published a special edition of the journal "Local Environment" devoted entirely to the topic of "Towards Sustainable Local Food Systems." It includes specific articles/essays on direct marketing, farmers markets, and consumer perceptions, among others. Unfortunately this link may be of little help because it appears that there is no access to the online versions of the articles yet, but for what it's worth I'll send the link anyway. At least you can see the titles of the articles and then perhaps you could hunt them down through other means (interlibrary loan? Google Scholar? ask authors directly?). I have tried several times to access the articles through Ohio State University's library webpage with no luck.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=g793227123~db=all

Cheers,

Matt Mariola